Assessment of Significant Sources Influencing the Variation of Water Quality of the River Damodar through Factor Analysis

摘要

In the present study, a large environmental data matrix, obtained during one year monitoring programme of 18 parameters at 16 different sites, subjected to factor analysis (FA) to study the geochemical status and to discriminate the different pollution sources of the river Damodar. Various physicochemical parameters like pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solid (TDS), ammonia (NH_4~+), chloride (Cl~-), nitrate (NO_3~-), sulphate (SO_(4)~(2-)), phosphate (PO_(4)~(3-)), iron (Fe), cadmium (Cd), manganese (Mn) and lead (Pb) were determined following the standard methods of APHA(1998). The average concentrations (μg/1) of the heavy metals in the water are Fe (598.4) > Pb (2.813) > Mn (1.369) > Cd (0.538). Factor analysis reveals four factors like industrial effluents, geogenic sources, agricultural activities and natural factors controlling the variability in waters of the river Damodar. The study of cluster analysis classified monitoring sites (16) into three clusters i.e., relatively less polluted, moderately polluted and highly polluted area. These results indicate that heavy metal pollution and toxicity might pose serious risks to the health of communities using these surface waters for domestic, commercial and socio-cultural purposes. It is, therefore, recommended that more strict methods of waste effluent management should be adopted to reduce further inputs into the study area.